A Thousand Masks
by Amaranthe Silverglade
Summary: forgive contradicting statements- this does have it's basis on a VtM/Mage chronicle- I had a bunch of stories posted up for me and regretably did not mention this to the person who helped me post these. Dah! Running out of typing space...no, wait a se
1. Prologue

"Yes, we know the truth. The truth is that knowledge is not power--it is the prelude to power. Knowledge lets us see what is really important and, most importantly, how to attain it. Power is, after all, what really matters. Power is not a means to an end--it is the end. Power is what makes our unlives worth living. Power is what gives the night meaning."  
  
-- Keith Herber, Clan Book: Tremere, The Price of Eternity 


	2. First Night

Avril sat up tensely in the darkness and drew her covers close about her. The night was silent as the grave and black as ebony. And it unnerved her. In the cover of true night, she held her breath and remained as stiff and silent as the dead. And though the silence was terrible, she was well aware that, on a night like this, the slightest noise would've sent her screaming. For an eternity, and a second, she sat there, too afraid to blink, just waiting for the light of dawn. Then slowly, slowly, cautious as a mouse in a room with a sleeping cat, she slank back under the sheets and covered her head with them, cringing and trembling in her fright.  
  
Nearby, one crystal blue eye blinked, shifted in place. It absorbed the images around- straining in the total darkness to make out the shadows of familar objects: the silhouette of a beaureu cluttered with undiscernable shapes, each melding in to the other's form, for all the night would say; the vague, blurred outline of a lamp; a large bulking shape in a corner one could only suppose to be the bed. Too difficult. Even creatures of sharper night vision required some light. In the pitch black of a starless, moonless sky, it was impossible to do as it was bid.  
  
Frustrated, the eye shifted once again, and rolled on to the floor, where it was promptly recieved by it's counterpart; a hand with flesh as white as death, that moved and crawled about like a spider, neatly seperated from it's rightful place with a cut just about as clean as if it had been hacked through with a chainsaw. Together they were a ghastly pair: the eye melding in to the hand's grotesquely done severing with vines of blood and flesh holding the form in place with the foulest of black sorceries.  
  
Nothing to be done. The homonculus retired it's quest, and returned to the outside, in the streets below. 


	3. Second Night

New moon was always painful. There was something about the darkness; as suffocating as being trapped in a closet, yet left you so exposed and vulnerable to everything that a closet would almost seem a welcome exchange. And though the moon had already begun it's rebirth; in the darkness, in the shadows, where night creatures lurked behind every corner, and a shadow could just as easily be one of...them, ready to pounce as soon as you got too close: she couldn't have chosen a worse place to be. "Rabbits hunting Hunters.."  
  
Here the lights were blinding bright- neon signs and car headlights lit up the sky for miles around; screeching, honking, nasty cab drivers spitting up foul angry words, and the pounding of a thousand feet walking the cold streets. This was Boston. This was night life. Theatre District Boston. Avril looked around at her company. Gabrielle: calm and lax, blending in to the city life like a tiger to the jungle. Pasque: careful, calculating, but just as confident and fearless. And she couldn't help but think what fools the both of them had to be. Naive, proud- too proud to remember their own mortality. Too proud to remember-to know? That the creatures they faced were decades, centuries older- and there was more than just experience and the wisdom of ages on their side.  
  
"Why am I here? They know me, they know me!! Run... I should run..."  
  
Pasque motioned for the group to follow along quietly, as she slank with cat's grace and cunning into the shadows of the alley. The space was suffocating; sandwiching the group and forcing them to go in single file. Putrid alley smells abound; rotting trash, cigarette smoke mixing with monoxide gas from car exaust, and something...  
  
something...  
  
like the rotting but not quite. Bitter, foul, but oh, so very discreet. Gabrielle suddenly shot his arms out to the walls. "I... I tripped," he stated, and Pasque just shook her head.  
  
"What!?! The floor's wet, it's slippery! It is!" he protested. Avril got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, and hesitantly looked down, straining to make out forms in the alley's own endless night. Dark, opaque liquid blanketed the ground, and a certain... vaguely... familiar shape...  
  
"Look," said Avril, pointing, shaking, her voice as soft as a whisper.  
  
Pasque and Gabrielle immedietly directed their attention to the disfigured shape on the ground: the remnants of a human being.  
  
Gabrielle stared in a horrified fascination. "Oh my God..."  
  
Pasque observed the shape quietly for a moment, searching, studying. "We're on the right track. Let's go."  
  
*****  
  
In another part of the city, a young man with white blonde hair and crystal blue eyes was only two steps behind, waiting in the shadows.  
  
"Damn!!"  
  
Christiaan brought his fist crashing down upon the sturdy, brick walls of the Red Rose Garden and Herb shop. He'd managed well enough for four and a half years, but now...now that he was so close, every minute seemed to last an eternity- though in reality, time was short: if his esteemed coworkers discovered he was neglecting his duties to track down a mere girl-and an Orphan mage at that- well, there'd be hell to pay. And though at the moment, Satan was on his side, he wasn't really all that eager to find out what'd happen to have every lowlife, hunter, and magus for miles out for his blood.  
  
Someone coming.  
  
What the hell, he'd gone far enough. Christiaan decided to leave a little parting gift- and announce his presence formally in the city. 


	4. Third Day

They had been out all night, searching the reeking streets of the theatre district for demons in the night. They parted their separate ways- but not before Pasque had arranged another meeting- and lectured a good deal on staying together, dangerous times, etc. etc. Avril had to adjust to their time now- it was the only way to hunt a predator without waking up with a slit throat. Trudging up to her little shop and home, she wearily arrived at the door. There was a large, heavy package waiting for her- on order of roses for the store, it said. Landlord's scarf. Huh. The old gentleman often made his rounds very early in the morning- good business, he said. Early bird catches the worm, he said. She would have to return it to him later. Avril turned the knob and entered in to the little house. She set the large, plain cardboard box onto the kitchen counter. She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut open the tape sealing it, and pulled back the box flaps. Strange flowers. Very strange. She had never seen roses like these before- white as moonshine in spots and a deep, vibrant red in others. It flowed in splotches and specks like a painting, in patterns that seemed so natural and at the same time so...intentional. Somebody hadn't taken particular care of them. They had been sealed in that box, with no air holes, no water, and they had a faint aroma that hinted they were also beginning to rot in there. She went and fetched a couple green glass vases and filled them with water- mixing in some plant preservatives and placing them on the counter with the box. She pulled out the flowers, and peered in to the box, careful to make sure she hadn't missed anything.  
  
The flowers fell to the ground.  
  
It wasn't long before she joined them. 


	5. Third Night

Night fall, that's where they found her; unconcious on the ground with a bouquet of blood soaked roses and a mauled corpse ripped apart in a thousand tiny pieces packaged in a big brown box. Lovely. Gabrielle glanced over to Pasque, then to Avril, then to... the body. "You think it's them?" he asked.  
  
Pasque turned her nose up in disgust, then knelt beside Avril. "Wake up." she touched her forehead, and Avril shot up, shaking and shivering badly, her countenance holding a dead palor. "I've got to get out of here...I've got to get of here now..."  
  
Pasque gave her a stern look. "Don't you even care that there are hundreds of us disapearing every day, just vanishing out of existance? So you've had a bit of a shock... there are mages out there who are dead, or worse- and it's not just in this city. Do you think you can just run away from this?"  
  
Avril looked silently up at her, and buried her head between her knees. Pasque motioned to Gabrielle, who stood there dumbly, trying to decide what to do with himself, then she waved her hand over in the direction of the box.  
  
"Get that thing out of here before someone comes in and starts asking questions." 


End file.
